Dog Grooming

Usually, we don’t give grooming a lot of thought when choosing dogs, but we really should. A heavily shedding dog will make you miserable if you are a neat freak. Some coats require extra care to keep the dog happy and healthy, and dogs with heavy coats can cause allergies.

Among the hardest to groom are double-coated, longhaired dogs. For example, Australian shepherds lose large amounts of hair, especially when they shed twice a year. Your house will be full of Aussie fur if you don’t keep up with the brushing. There are some double-coated dogs that have fairly short and coarse hair. But they shed their fuzzy coat the whole year round, leaving dust bunnies everywhere.

The Lab is another notorious shedder. Labs shed throughout the whole year, despite their low-maintenance reputation. If you wear black pants and pet a yellow Lab, you’ll get the ultimate Lab experience—tons of short and spiky hair stuck to you. No matter how much you brush them, hair will appear just about everywhere.

Setters are some of the dogs who shed the least. They have a single coat, and even though their fur is long, it’s quite thin—almost like human hair. They shed minimally, but you still must brush them on a regular basis to avoid tangling.

A dog’s coat can be perfect for one person and a nightmare for another. For instance, people with allergies have less symptoms when they keep poodles, because they don’t shed as much. However, poodles do require brushing and clipping on a regular basis. They have coats that are tightly curled and if it doesn’t get groomed enough, it can become matted. Therefore, a poodle is a wrong dog for those who don’t have time or money for a high maintenance coat.

All dogs need to be brushed at least once a week. Australian shepherd or the Belgian Malinois should be brushed daily to keep their shedding to a minimum. Dogs don’t need a bath more than once a month, unless they spend lots of time rolling in the mud or other unpleasant substances. They have natural oils that keep their body warm and their skin healthy. If they are bathed too much, it can cause dandruff and wash away the good oils and cause other skin conditions. However, dogs can benefit from a weekly shampooing if they suffer from allergies. Also, if their owner has allergies, weekly shampooing can benefit and decrease the symptoms.

Ear cleaning, nail clipping and teeth brushing are all included in other regular grooming. Dogs like Labs or golden retrievers, who have droopy ears, are prone to getting ear infections, so it’s important to clean their ears on a regular basis—but never use a cotton swab or anything that is small enough to get into their ear canal, use a cotton ball and ear cleaning solution. If a dog doesn’t walk on concrete which wears its nail down naturally from a rough surface, nails need to be clipped. You really should brush your dog’s teeth every day, or at least every week.

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